Axel and Michelle

Dear Birth Mother,

Making the decision to give up your baby surely hasn’t been easy for you, and finding the right home is just as tough given all the choices. We pride ourselves on being simple, sincere and honest, and we don’t want to paint an ideal picture of who we are. We realize that choosing the right home is ultimately a matter of the heart, so we want to give you as much information as possible about ourselves to answer the question for yourself whether our home is right for your baby.

Feel free to browse the pictures about ourselves, our life and our home. Take your time and let the images speak to your heart. We want to make sure you know enough to decide if embarking on this journey with us is the right step for you. We hope that you’ll take the time to look around and learn a bit about us. We think you’ll find that we are a warm, loving and playful couple. We both want very much to become parents, and cannot wait to open our home, our hearts, and our lives to a child.

We look forward to meeting you

About Us
It’s hard to give you a good picture of who we are in such a small space. Like most people, we have so many facets that don’t just neatly fit inside a few paragraphs. So a few highlights will have to suffice. We met online in the fall of 2006, when Axel (living in Santa Cruz) took a leap of faith and clicked on Michelle's profile, (who was in Los Angeles) and sent her a “smile” on her birthday. We met for our first date less than 2 weeks later, and our fates were sealed. Six months later, Michelle moved to Santa Cruz, and in the summer of 2008 we were married.

Our life together is about living with spirit. We are both very playful and often tease each other. We’re rather rebellious in nature and we don’t like to get pushed around, but we are a couple of softies and we have big, big hearts and we have no qualms about shedding plenty of tears when we feel touched and moved. We both have a deep love for nature, critters and plants. We are surrounded by natural beauty and we wouldn't have it any other way. We love the ocean and the beach, the redwoods and the mountains. We are adventurous, and we like to travel to exotic places like the jungles of Costa Rica and the temples of Thailand. Our garden is a reflection of our travels, filled with exotic palm trees and an orchard full of exotic fruits.

Love and nurture is a central theme in our life, and until a child comes along, it’s our critters and our garden that benefit for the time being. We have an extensive family of furried and feathered critters, including our cat, Max, our dog, Inga, and a whole flock of chickens and ducks who keep us well stocked with eggs throughout the year.

To see and read even more about us, visit our website: www.axelandmichelle.com.

About Axel (by Michelle)
Axel is simply one of the most loving, big-hearted, compassionate people I have ever known. I knew on our first date that I would marry him. He is such an amazing husband and friend, who loves to bring me flowers and write me poems. He is wicked smart, wildly passionate about the people and things he cares about, and delightfully playful. He is always cracking me up at the breakfast table. He has never lost touch with his inner child and cannot wait to be a daddy and take our kids to the beach, play with them in the backyard, or just get into a tickle fight in the living room. But the best part about Axel is the way he does everything 100%. He doesn’t just do something a little bit, he does what he does all the way, and that includes love. He loves unconditionally, and when we are finally able to welcome a child into our family, Axel will be a daddy all the way. When we are given the privilege to raise a child, he or she will never need to doubt how much their daddy loves them. Becoming a father has been one of his biggest dreams in life. It also goes without saying that it will be one of the biggest challenges of his (our) life, but I know that Axel has the strength, the desire and the commitment to take on that challenge and be an amazing father. He has lived through some very difficult situations in his life, some that many people could not have survived, and become a much stronger and open-hearted person as a result. The truth is, he’s a big softie! What drew me to Axel immediately was his strength of character, and his bottomless heart.

Of course, Axel will be so much more than just a fun, playful dad. He also wants to help teach our children all the important lessons of life. Because of the experiences he has lived through, I know he will be a very wise and insightful teacher. His view, like mine, is that parents are there to help guide and encourage their children in their life choices, not to dictate, but to help them decide for themselves what they want to be when they grow up.

About Michelle (by Axel)
The day Michelle’s path crossed mine was the luckiest day of my life, and my life was changed forever. Michelle’s warmth, compassion, love and companionship illuminate every moment of my life. She pours her heart into everything she does, in a steadfast, thorough, selfless and deeply nurturing manner, and there have been many moments where I have witnessed the amazing transformative power of such love. What I’ve noticed is that at her core there is a deeply spiritual being that reveres all life around her, pouring out her unconditional love. She likes to live with an open heart and be real, embracing both the great and the difficult stuff like grief.

At the same time, she never looses touch with her own humanity, being able to laugh at herself, goofing off, and nurturing her own inner child and a deep yearning for adventure. She is always ready to come along on the latest adventure I manage to conjure up. We have a lot of fun together, being playful with each other. Even on those rare occasions where we manage to get into an argument, we end up cracking up with laughter once we catch on how silly we were being.

That incredible balance between goofing off and having fun and a grounded nurturing and steadfast patience is a big part of what will make Michelle an amazing mom. But that’s not all, words just don’t do justice in such a short space. Michelle is also a great story teller, singer, organizer and cooks some really delicious food. And she is incredibly smart, her engineering degree will help her become a great teacher and homework helper.

Michelle is passionate about nature and critters, and I know she can’t wait for our family to grow so that she can take our kids camping and on hikes, and play with our dog ‘Inga’, our cat ‘Max’ or hang out with our ducks and chickens.

Our Home
Nested up in the foothills overlooking the ocean and the city of Santa Cruz, our home is literally a little garden of Eden. Our house is surrounded by subtropical fruit trees and tropical palm trees, with a plethora of exotic fruits ripening pretty much every month of the year. The house itself was designed to fully take advantage of the lush garden: every room of the house opens up into the garden in some way, either through a terrace or a balcony. Our garden faces to the southwest, opening up to amazing vistas of blue water embracing the redwood covered mountains, and amazing sunsets are a regular treat on sunny days. But the place is way too big for just the two of us. We only use one of the four bedrooms, we can’t wait to fill the other bedrooms with a growing family.

We often like to take our dog,Inga, on walks into the redwoods of Henry Cowell State Park. The San Lorenzo river flows right through the middle of the park, and one of the best swimming holes is only a half hour hike from the house. But the beach is our other favorite getaway. A 10 minute drive is all it takes to our favorite hangout next to the Santa Cruz harbor, or to cruise out to the end of the pier to watch the pelicans and sea lions.

Our Critters
Inga
Inga is a very gentle, sweet natured girl, who wants nothing more out of life than to be around nice people, get lots of cookies, take a nice long walk and get a good belly rub. We adopted her from German Shepherd Rescue, but quickly learned that she has the temperament of a golden retriever - just sweet, loving and adoring of people. She also adores Max, her older “brother”, and follows him everywhere. She loves to be outdoors, enjoying the garden, and helping Daddy control the gophers in the orchard. And she absolutely loves to be around kids. We know she is looking forward to being best friends with a child, and will be a very loyal and protective companion.

Max

Max is an old fellow with a purr motor that almost never stops. Like most cats, he is a true creature of comfort, and enjoys spending hours curled up on a soft pillow in front of a sunny window. His days of chasing gophers in the garden are behind him, and he now spends his days chasing sunbeams. He also loves to talk and be where the people are (because that usually means food is nearby!), and he has become good buddies with his younger “sister”, Inga. And of course, he enjoys a nice lap to curl up on and soak up some petting.

Our Fine Feathered Friends

In addition to the four-leggeds, we've also added chickens (Roxanne, Sweet Loretta, Trudi and Stumpy), and 2 ducks (Chloe and Camilla) to our brood last year. The chickens are a hoot, and we love to watch them free-ranging around the garden. Chloe and Camilla are inseparable, true BFFs.

Our Roots

Axel's Family (by Axel)
I grew up in an active family where there was always lots going on and life was focused on the outdoors. We had a beautiful fruit orchard, and some of my most cherished memories lay out there. In the summer, my sister, my brother and I would gorge ourselves all day long with cherries, frustrating my mother for not having any real appetite for lunch.

Although my mother would bake some of the most wonderful pies with the peaches and plums. The old apples trees were my dad's pride, and Fall inevitably would provide a plethora of apples. When my dad noticed my love for plants, he built me a greenhouse where I could grow whatever I wanted.

During the winters we inevitably headed for the higher sunnier slopes of the Alps to enjoy many days of skiing and wonderful white Christmases with extended family that often included cousins, aunts, uncles, and grand-parents. I would always look forward to the lighting of the christmas tree, we still used real wax candles in those days, and my mother would bake the most wonderful christmas cookies that warmed up even the most dreary of Winter days.

I still have vivid memories of my childhood, and I haven't forgotten how magical the early years of childhood can be. I can't wait to provide a warm loving home full of opportunities for my kids to learn all about the mysteries of this world.

Michelle's Family (by Michelle)
I grew up in a family of five siblings, with 2 older sisters and 2 older brothers. It was a very loving family, where affection was (and still is) always abundant. Both of my parents are very strong, wise and soft-hearted, my mother being a classical matriarch, and my father a soft spoken, tender man. I have such great memories of family vacations in the station wagon and Christmas mornings ripping into gift boxes and stockings. Family vacations were usually out in nature somewhere, to a national park - the Rocky Mountains, Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Yosemite - so my parents instilled a deep love of nature in us from a very early age. We always had a menagerie of pets as well, so I developed quite a soft spot for anything four-legged and furry. I was also a bit of a tomboy growing up, and still am to a certain extent. Growing up with 4 older brothers and sisters, I was seldom lonely, and we are still close today, even though we live in different parts of the country. My oldest brother, Bob, passed away in 2006, and that event brought my family so much closer. We are usually all together at Christmas, either in Tennessee, California or Santa Fe. Everyone in my family looks forward to welcoming a new member soon.

Our Final Thoughts
We are grateful that you have taken the time to get to know a little bit about us. We hope we have given you a good sense of who we are, and the kind of loving, nurturing home that we can offer a child.

With Respect and Gratitude,
Axel and Michelle

If you have an questions for us, or would like to talk to us about adopting your child, please contact an AdoptHelp advisor by Calling 1-800-637-7999 or clicking the "Contact Us" button below.

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